“the fire temperatures and steel strength compromising results using scientifically established numbers” come from the NIST WTC 7 computer model which does not model (replicate) the actual WTC 7 fall and is therefore invalid. Do you seriously believe an experiment that doesn’t replicate what is was designed to replicate is in any way valid? Scientific results require independent verification as well. NIST refuses to release the WTC 7 model data due to “security concerns”. You believe data from a non-replicating, invalid, unverified model constitutes scientific evidence? That explains a lot.

Sorry, not buying it. You don’t actually believe that, you’re just faking. You may as well be trying to convince me you can’t read. :p

And you exit with an argument from incredulity combined with a bare assertion fallacy. Typical CFI posturing.

When you can prove you actually believe what you’re saying you do, get back to me.

Edit: Incidently Michael, I’m willing to entertain the notion you actually believe what you say you believe. However, I will only do so of you claim to be the expert on what your beliefs are and you assert I should trust your expertise on the issue.

Just wanted to say that I found this thread via Google because I am interested in why the NIST WTC 7 report has been accepted without challenge from the mainstream scientific community, despite the fact that the ANSYS data is not available for verification and the models published on the NIST website do not look anything like the event to me.

I’m particularly interested in what kind of public safety risk data of a computer sim of a building collapsing is supposed to represent, ten years after the event. Refusing to publish it, it seems to me, is profoundly telling.

Having read the whole thread I have to say that no-one has answered Michael Fullerton’s points sincerely. psik’s points at post 36 are by far the most significant and really do appear to be the final word on the subject.

Can anyone here provide any scientific evidence whatsoever to support the official explanation that WTC 7 fell on 9/11 2001 due only to fire damage? If not, why does CFI and most of its members favor an explanation with absolutely no scientific supporting evidence and reject the only explanation with scientific supporting evidence?

it is claimed that 9/11 skeptics such as myself make “few attempts at public debate”. However, I have been trying to get someone with a science background to debate me with no success as all. All CFI groups I have contacted but one have completely ignored my proposal for scientific debate.

Popular Mechanics did a good article debunking the myths. The article has been expanded into a book. I haven’t read the book, but did read the article. It’s worth reading. You can read the article here:

Where has anyone presented a “scientific” explanation of how fire or damage from debris caused opposite ends of a building 300 feet wide to come straight down in sync?

It is ridiculous! Claiming authority from sources that people don’t check and think about.

9/11 has given scientists a great opportunity to contradict their own claims of expertise. It is sure interesting that we can model meteor strikes that scientists can regard as accurate but can’t do it for skyscraper collapses.

So scientists could do computer simulations of events way more complicated than skyscraper collapses before 9/11 but these scientists cannot resolve this trivia.

Now that is a bigger issue than who actually did it. They can find Higgs Bosons and land robots on Mars. But the problem is that they are vastly outnumbered by people who want to believe stupid shit especially with the media encouraging the belief in the stupid shit. So there must be Big MONEY involved. Who pays the salaries of the scientists?

The problem you’ll confront Fullerton is that there’s so much more to the 911 debate than mere science. I’d say it’s more about personal psychology and politics than any technical discussion. Smart people, scientists and engineers, on all sides of the issue will go to extreme lengths to prove their pre-conceived personal opinions. . . .

So will the people who think something nefarious was going on. So where does that leave us? Neither you nor anyone else has ever produced a scrap of evidence that refutes the government’s assessment (which has substantial evidence) yet you continue to back baseless conspiracy theories. If, as you say, there is more to it than “mere science,” please let us know exactly what beyond “mere science” you are basing your beliefs on—other than baseless speculation, that is.

Where has anyone presented a “scientific” explanation of how fire or damage from debris caused opposite ends of a building 300 feet wide to come straight down in sync?

It is ridiculous! Claiming authority from sources that people don’t check and think about.

9/11 has given scientists a great opportunity to contradict their own claims of expertise. It is sure interesting that we can model meteor strikes that scientists can regard as accurate but can’t do it for skyscraper collapses.

So scientists could do computer simulations of events way more complicated than skyscraper collapses before 9/11 but these scientists cannot resolve this trivia.

Now that is a bigger issue than who actually did it. They can find Higgs Bosons and land robots on Mars. But the problem is that they are vastly outnumbered by people who want to believe stupid shit especially with the media encouraging the belief in the stupid shit. So there must be Big MONEY involved. Who pays the salaries of the scientists?

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psik

Seems to me your argument is with the Popular Mechanics writers and all of the other scientists who depend on evidence instead of speculation. Why don’t you take it up with them? Ask them your conspiratorial questions.

Seems to me your argument is with the Popular Mechanics writers and all of the other scientists who depend on evidence instead of speculation. Why don’t you take it up with them? Ask them your conspiratorial questions.

....

I didn’t say anything about any conspiracy.

I have the NIST report burned to DVD. It is not speculation that they do not specify they total amount of concrete in the towers in their 10,000 pages though they do it for the steel. It is not my fault that you trust sources that you do not check and expect people to be impressed by the word “scientist”.

Purdue claims their simulation of the north tower impact is “scientific”. But they only simulated the top 20 stories and the plane impacted at the 94th story. But the NIST report says the south tower deflected 1 foot horizontally 11 stories below the impact point so the Purdue simulation cannot be handling the Conservation of Momentum correctly.

Call it speculation if you want but it is easy to check. But no one has called out Purdue on this, besides me.

Curious how the word “science” gets thrown around so much on this site but it only amounts to “believing” sources regarded as scientific. So how can two scientific sources contradict each other?

psik

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Physics is Phutile
Fiziks is Fundamental
Since 9/11 Physics has been History

It is not subscribing to a conspiracy theory to observe that the NIST computer models do not resemble the video evidence. Neither is it subscribing to a conspiracy theory to note that the NIST computer models have not been made available for independent verification. So the question of how multiple structural columns in WTC7 appeared to fail simultaneously remains, at least to my mind.

Seems to me your argument is with the Popular Mechanics writers and all of the other scientists who depend on evidence instead of speculation. Why don’t you take it up with them? Ask them your conspiratorial questions.

....

I didn’t say anything about any conspiracy.

I have the NIST report burned to DVD. It is not speculation that they do not specify they total amount of concrete in the towers in their 10,000 pages though they do it for the steel. It is not my fault that you trust sources that you do not check and expect people to be impressed by the word “scientist”.

Purdue claims their simulation of the north tower impact is “scientific”. But they only simulated the top 20 stories and the plane impacted at the 94th story. But the NIST report says the south tower deflected 1 foot horizontally 11 stories below the impact point so the Purdue simulation cannot be handling the Conservation of Momentum correctly.

Call it speculation if you want but it is easy to check. But no one has called out Purdue on this, besides me.

Curious how the word “science” gets thrown around so much on this site but it only amounts to “believing” sources regarded as scientific. So how can two scientific sources contradict each other?

psik

What are you suggesting, then? It sounds like speculation, which can easily lead to conspiracy theories. What do you think the NIST report implies? What would have caused the south tower to deflect one foot horizontally below the impact? You must have an idea. What is it? It does no good to claim you are not engaging in a conspiracy theory when you give so little information about what you are reading into the report. You make implications but you don’t go to the next step and describe what that is likely to mean. That is at the heart of conspiracy theories, even if you don’t want to admit that you are suggesting a conspiracy without using the word. Any report about something as devastating as the WTC bombing is going to have a few unexplained factors. That is no reason to assume that there was a conspiracy afoot or that someone is hiding something for nefarious reasons or using “bad science.” You’re going to have to come up with a lot more specifics before you get intelligent people to give your ideas the time of day. Try getting a good number of respected scientists to go along with your speculations, more people will listen to your ideas and you won’t find yourself put into the same category as conspiracy nuts. Until then you will be considered one of them, no matter your disclaimers.

What are you suggesting, then? It sounds like speculation, which can easily lead to conspiracy theories. What do you think the NIST report implies? What would have caused the south tower to deflect one foot horizontally below the impact? You must have an idea. What is it?

You’re going to have to come up with a lot more specifics before you get intelligent people to give your ideas the time of day.

Are you one of those intelligent people?

You seem to have a problem with science. I took for granted that you understood the significance of the deflection.

The plane hit the south tower at 550 mph with a mass of about 150 tons. The formula for momentum is mass times velocity. So that much momentum had to be imparted to the building. The conservation of momentum means the building had to move. How much and how fast would depend on the mass and the stiffness of the building.

The NIST report has a graph of the deflection and oscillation of the south tower but the camera only photographed up to the 70th floor and the plane impacted at the 81st. So 11 storeys below where the plane impacted, the momentum of the plane caused the building to deflect 12 inches. That is an empirical “scientific” fact. (unless the NIST is lying) Extrapolation indicates the building moved about 15 inches at the level where the plane hit. But that is only my extrapolation and I have never seen anyone else bring up the subject. So what are those “intelligent people” doing?

But the Purdue simulation, which they claim is “scientific”, does not even simulate the building 11 storeys below the impact point on the north tower. The have their 20 storey stub of a building immovable 6 storeys below their simulated impact. So their “scientific” simulation has a problem. What happened to the momentum? Did all of the energy go into structural damage? If so that would mean their simulation reported too much damage.

All you do is throw around the words “conspiracy” and “speculation” and “intelligent” but do not demonstrate that you comprehend the “scientific” aspects of the 9/11 incidents for yourself. You treat science like a religion and the people you designate as scientific like priesthood. Science is about UNDERSTAND THINGS and not just by experts who do not demand and publicise relevant data. How many tons of steel and tons of concrete were on each and every level of the towers? If you can’t understand the relevance of that then how can you evaluate if anything is “scientific” about any paper or article on 9/11?

psik

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Physics is Phutile
Fiziks is Fundamental
Since 9/11 Physics has been History

I haven’t kept up with this thread, but I do find it odd that so many posters who I’d otherwise call “skeptical” (I mean this is the CFI for crying out loud) are so UN-skeptical when it comes to accepting the government research on 911. I mean if ever there was a government that should NOT be trusted it was the US government under Bush and the neocons. Remember that little lie about WMD in Iraq? The little lie about knowing ahead of time OBL was planning an attack, etc.? And on and on. And remember how Bush and Cheney fought tooth and nail to prevent the 911 commission from forming, then again to testify for it? IMO the real conspiracy is the nutjobs who think the Bush administration and their neocons minions DIDN’T have a hand in it, either directly or at least by letting it happen. Their track record makes that almost unbelieveable.

IMO the real conspiracy is the nutjobs who think the Bush administration and their neocons minions DIDN’T have a hand in it, either directly or at least by letting it happen.

They didn’t. At least not by deliberate intent.

Stupidity coupled with blindness to the mounting evidence before them that Al Qiada was planning something, now THAT’s believable.

The rest assumes a level of compatence in government which doesn’t exists.

It also assumes that somebody forty years ago…about when the Towers were built…would have a certain level of precience which would allow them to plant bombs in anticipation of a course of world events and geopolitical reality which didn’t exist at the time and which wouldn’t exist until the 1990’s.

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Question authority and think for yourself. Big Brother does not know best and never has.

IMO the real conspiracy is the nutjobs who think the Bush administration and their neocons minions DIDN’T have a hand in it, either directly or at least by letting it happen.

They didn’t. At least not by deliberate intent.

Stupidity coupled with blindness to the mounting evidence before them that Al Qiada was planning something, now THAT’s believable.

The rest assumes a level of compatence in government which doesn’t exists.

It also assumes that somebody forty years ago…about when the Towers were built…would have a certain level of precience which would allow them to plant bombs in anticipation of a course of world events and geopolitical reality which didn’t exist at the time and which wouldn’t exist until the 1990’s.

Oh why did I peek

Equal I agree.

Though I take it a little further. I think perhaps the explanation for the Bush Administration ignoring their Counter-Terrorism Advisor was calculating that a little incident (a battle ship, embassy attack) might come in quite handy for rallying InvadeIraqFever, therefore they weren’t in any hurry to start paying attention to what Clark was crying about. Never imagining in their hubristic Texican hearts that them “towel heads” were capable of surprising the hell out of everyone… even themselves.

The rest assumes a level of compatence in government which doesn’t exists.

There certainly doesn’t seem to have been any competence to the NIST investigation into the collapse of WTC 7. NIST failed to test for explosives ffs. Wouldn’t this have cost a fraction of the public millions it spent on developing computer models of a hypothesised fire-induced collapse which looked nothing like the event?

I find it interesting that the Bush administration’s “incompetence” is advanced as an argument against the suggestion that WTC 7 was a controlled demolition. Certainly, the conspirators hit two targets and achieved two spectacular successes, but if WTC 7 really was a controlled demolition one might assume that competent conspirators would attempt to bring it down around the same time as the Towers.

But either way, I don’t understand why NIST would deliberately avoid testing for explosives in order to eradicate the question completely. I say “deliberately avoid” as my understanding is NIST reasoned it did not need to bother testing for explosives because it did not have enough evidence for loud explosions at the time of the collapse. Other evidence of explosives may also have been lacking (and it is certainly outrageous that NIST had so little evidence to examine) but for NIST even to engage in that kind of non-reasoning in a supposedly scientific investigation is quite extraordinary.